World economy has survived a speed bump

Last week, Germany and Japan became the latest countries to publish GDP figures, showing that their economies lost momentum in the opening quarter of the year, writes Oliver Mangan. 

The German data showed that growth slowed to 0.3% in the first quarter, from 0.7% and 0.6% in the final two quarters of last year.

The data were very much in line with figures already published for other eurozone economies.